Pango-1.4.0 released

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Pango-1.4.0 is now available for download at:

 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.2/

pango-1.4.0.tar.bz2   md5sum: 9b5d9a5dcce5b3899d401f9c2cd6873f
pango-1.4.0.tar.gz    md5sum: 14c4938fc0263eabd1a5b0f32cb5f6fa

This is a stable release providing new functionality as compared
to Pango-1.2, while maintaining source and binary compatibility.
Notable improvements in Pango since version 1.2:

 * Support for characters beyond the basic-multilingual
   plane of Unicode and updates of character properties to
   match Unicode-4.0.

 * The same modules are now used for the Xft and fontconfig
   backends, reducing code duplication, and making it easier
   to create new backends independent of Pango that use
   fontconfig and FreeType.

 * A better font and shaper selection algorithm is now used
   that takes script information into account.

 * Bidirectional base direction can now be automatically 
   determined from the text instead of explicitly set by
   the application.

 * Improvements to OpenType handling, especially for the GPOS
   table. GPOS features are now enabled for Arabic.
   

About Pango
===========

Pango is a library for layout and rendering of text, with an emphasis
on internationalization. Pango can be used anywhere that text layout
is needed, though most usage so far as been in the context of the
GTK+ widget toolkit. Pango forms the core of text and font handling 
for GTK+ 2.

Pango is designed to be modular; the core Pango layout can be used
with three different font backends:

 - Client-side fonts on X using the Xft2 library
 - Direct rendering of scalable fonts using the FreeType library
 - Native fonts on Microsoft platforms

Dynamically loaded modules then handle text layout for particular
combinations of script and font backend. Pango-1.4.0 ships with a wide
selection of modules, including modules for Hebrew, Arabic, Hangul, 
Thai, and a number of Indic scripts. Virtually all of the world's major 
scripts are supported.

As well as the low level layout rendering routines, Pango includes
PangoLayout, a high level driver for laying out entire blocks of text,
and routines to assist in editing internationalized text.

More information about Pango is available from http://www.pango.org/.

Pango depends on version 2.0.0 or better of the GLib library; more 
information about GLib can be found at http://www.gtk.org/.

Special thanks to:

 Noah Levitt [Unicode 4.0 support]
 Dov Grobgeld [Automatic paragraph direction determination]
 Hans Breuer and Tor Lillqvist [Win32 backend maintenance]
 James Henstridge [Automake-1.7 conversion]

Thanks to all Pango-1.4 contributors, including:

 Josh Beam, Jeff Bonggren, Ross Burton, Kailash C. Chowksey, Matthias Clasen, 
 Sayamindu Dasgupta, Rodney Dawes, John Ehresman, Shoshannah Forbes, 
 Tony Graham, Cedric Gustin, J. Ali Harlow, Theppitak Karoonboonyanan,
 Martin Kretzschmar, Kaushal Kumar, Kjartan Maraas, Mehran Mehr, 
 Julio M. Merino Vidal, Sven Neumann, Padraig O'Briain, Christian Persch, 
 Laszlo Peter, Martin Pool, Roozbeh Pournader, Nicolas Setton, 
 Manish Singh, Manjunath Sripadarao, Mariano SuÃrez-Alvarez, 
 SÃren Sandmann, Torsten Schoenfeld, Morten Welinder, Masatake YAMATO

Owen Taylor
16 March 2004